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Skate, Sure, but Don’t Expect a Zamboni

On Budd Lake in Mount Olive, N.J. John Watral,left, created a skatable clearing  used also by his son, Timmy, 10, right, and Hallie Brown, 11.Credit
Nancy Wegard for The New York Times

TARRYTOWN, N.Y.

ON a typical Sunday winter afternoon, the only sounds in the woods around the Tarrytown Lakes are a screaming hawk or a chattering squirrel. Recently, though, the lakes have echoed with the classic rock of the Beatles and the Doobie Brothers.

For the first time in two years, the lake ice is sufficiently thick for skating. And the skaters have been out in force, accompanied by music from a Parks and Recreation Department employee’s iPod that is piped over loudspeakers.

“I’ve been skating here since I was little,” said Molly McGovern, 18, who recently skated there with a friend, Christian Zolbe, also 18. Both live in Tarrytown and attend Sleepy Hollow High School.

Ms. McGovern said she did not remember the lakes freezing much until she was 8. Then, “every night it was open I’d come and skate for three or four hours,” she said.

Skaters are gliding along outdoors at sites across the metropolitan area, including the Great South Bay on Long Island and Edgemont Park in Montclair, N.J.

But whether the water is sufficiently frozen can vary even in the same town. In Linden, N.J., for example, Beno’s Pond in Veterans Memorial Park was open for a week in January, but across town, the pond in Wilson Park has not developed enough ice to allow skating, said Alfred MacDonald, acting director of the Department of Public Property and Community Service.

Photo

ON ICE At the Chubb Park skating pond in Chester, N.J. Zoe Antonius, 7, struggled on the uneven surface.Credit
Nancy Wegard for The New York Times

The challenge is finding a spot that is open, safe and supervised, officials say. Some areas that once allowed skating no longer do, including the Nassau County parks, said a spokesman, David Ring. “We have pictures of people skating from years and years ago,” he said. “But it’s been quite a long time since it’s been allowed.”

Skating continues in Tarrytown, though. Residents have been skating on the lakes since the 1930s, said Eddie McClain, 52, an employee of the village’s Parks and Recreation Department.

“When I was 10, I used to come here and do the same thing,” he said as he sold the green plastic buttons that permit residents and nonresidents to skate there. “They’d open up at 10 a.m., and I’d be here until closing.”

The skating areas — cleared-off oval patches ringed by hardened snow that creates makeshift benches — opened on Jan. 23 and will stay open as long as the ice is sufficiently thick, at least six inches, Mr. McClain said.

The decision to allow lake skating relies on decidedly preindustrial technology — an ax and a homemade wooden dipstick. The process is simple enough: chop a hole in the ice, drop the stick through and measure the ice’s thickness. At the one-inch mark, the dipstick reads, “run — run”; at three inches, “almost”; at 18 inches, “fantastic.”

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Skaters have a shack in which to warm up and buy hot drinks; two portable toilets; and an array of donated skates that rent for $3. Two hockey rinks lie on either side of the large central skating area. Nonresidents pay $5 a day and residents pay $10 for the season.

Tina Bellino, 44, who has lived in Tarrytown for 21 years, came with Richard Cesca, also 44 and a Tarrytown resident, who was happily carrying two hockey sticks.

“It’s my first time on the lake,” Ms. Bellino said. “I’m doing this because he’s the skater. I’d rather be in a warm house.”

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SPIN Skating on Tarrytown Lakes in Tarrytown.Credit
Joyce Dopkeen/The New York Times

By 1:30 p.m. on Jan. 25, while sun gleamed off the ice under a clear blue sky, Mr. McClain had already registered 85 skaters that day, and 263 had signed up in two days.

Skaters on that first weekend included foreign students from a nearby language school, tiny children shuffling and tumbling, and Philip Vachon, a 48-year-old lighting designer who was gliding with smooth, powerful strokes. Mr. Vachon, a Tarrytown resident born in Montreal, said he learned to skate when he was 3.

“People look at you like you’re bizarre when I tell them, ‘I went skating on the pond in my village this weekend,’ ” he said. “This is not a norm in a lot of towns.

“I know three-quarters of the people out here. I can see my friends and neighbors who’ve been shuttered in for weeks. This is a real community activity.”

Only two parks under county jurisdiction offer pond skating, said Karen Sposato, a spokeswoman for the parks department — Twin Lakes Park in Eastchester and Tibbetts Brook Park in Yonkers. Skaters use the ice unsupervised and may skate only during daylight hours, she said. Because the ice forms naturally on ponds and is not groomed, the surface can be rough, she warned.

Some other towns and villages have their own natural skating areas. For example, Mount Kisco residents can enjoy skating on the lighted, supervised pond in Leonard Park, and in Pleasantville residents and nonresidents can use Opperman’s Pond and the pond in Nannahagan Park.

In Glastonbury, Conn., a town of 30,000, residents are skating on both the J. B. Williams Pond in the center of town and Eastbury Pond, a smaller, more isolated spot, said Bill Engel, the local recreation supervisor.

On weekends, when skating is supervised, J. B. Williams has attracted 20 to 30 skaters a day and Eastbury has had 50 to 70, Mr. Engel said. With no music or skate rentals, the atmosphere, he said, is "old traditional New England — it’s pretty bare bones.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page LI7 of the New York edition with the headline: Skate, Sure, But Don’t Expect A Zamboni. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe